


Eggs in a Basket

by Kailene



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Bromance, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, Missing Scene, S02E12 Mac+Jack, Speculation Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 14:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kailene/pseuds/Kailene
Summary: The upside, Mac thinks, is that at least they'll have all their ducks in a row, all their eggs in the same basket, and every other idiom that he knows his partner is going to rattle off. The meaning of the phrases may not properly fit the situation, but that doesn't matter, the spirit of the words ring true.And now they just needed a plan.





	Eggs in a Basket

**Author's Note:**

> This episode was Great. I absolutely loved that we got some backstory on how our Boys first met, and the fact that it wasn't Bromance right off the bat...Perfect, lol. But the how's and the why's of how exactly the Ghost was able to do what he did wouldn't leave me alone, and thus, this was born. 
> 
> RiatheMai, once again, thank you for everything.

  


 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Two gunshots ring out, one after another: clear, controlled, precise.

 

Glass shatters and a heavy gust of wind whistles as it rushes through the broken window.

 

A woman screams.

 

Mac doesn’t register any of it, focus solely on his partner who’s sitting an arms reach away, gaze distant and eyes unseeing what’s happening just ten feet in front of him.

 

 _“Happy Trails, Hans.”_  

 

The deep voice is easy, light and Mac isn’t sure if he’s actually hearing John McClane’s parting words come through his television speakers or if the quip is just so ingrained in his brain that his mind is supplying them for him.

 

Either way, it doesn’t matter. Their well-worn, go-to movie has been background noise as he worked on unwinding, his mind still too keyed up to give into the sleep he knows he desperately needs, his body still riding that high of escaping an almost certain death crossed with caffeine-fueled adrenaline.

 

The latter was courtesy of his partner—who still sits quiet and unmoving as the credits roll on his all-time favorite movie—who supplied the hot, black liquid to him on a continuous basis to help keep him awake while he worked on diffusing the seven barrels of CGN that they sat on. Mac didn’t question how Jack knew the exact amount of coffee that Mac could drink to stay awake and alert while still keeping his hands steady enough to work on the tiny, delicate, and intricate wiring system that had made up the bomb.

 

After the local police, SWAT, the FBI, and the Phoenix teams finally left his house, he and Jack spent the next few hours starting to put his house back together, pulling all the wires from inside his walls and rebuilding his living room floor before mutually deciding to call it a night with takeout pizza, a couple of well-earned beers, and a celebratory watching of the—original—Die Hard. The rest of the repairs, the patching and painting of the multitude of holes in all his walls can wait for another time.

 

Which is where they still are now. Mac’s half of the extra large meat lovers pizza is already gone, has been since a few minutes after the food arrived. One empty beer bottle takes up space beside the cardboard box, a second—half finished—rests balanced on the arm of the couch in his left hand.

 

Jack’s original bottle of beer, long gone warm, is still sitting where he placed it, unopened on his coffee table, wet ring of condensation spreading out underneath the glass and darkening the wood beneath. His half of the pizza is cold, cheese and toppings already starting to congeal.  

 

His partner, for all intents and purposes, looks relaxed, body sprawled against the back cushions of the couch, legs stretched out in front of him as he faces the television. But Mac knows better. He has been watching him since shortly after the movie began and knows that his partner hasn’t seen any of the film that he’s so obsessed with.

 

Jack’s face is pinched, deep furrows dug into the skin between his eyes, and the only word that Mac keeps coming up with to describe his expression is grim. He knows better than to reach out and touch Jack, shake his shoulder to bring his partner back from wherever it is he’s slipped off to. Hard-earned and painful experience, on both their parts, has taught him how much a bad idea that can be. So he opts instead, as hard as it is to do sometimes, to stay where he is, call out Jack’s name and hope his voice is enough to bring him back to the here and now.

 

“Jack?” There is no response.

 

He tries again, pitching his voice a little lower and uttering Jack’s name a little slower like he used to do back in the desert when he was trapped between a live IED and band of insurgents, and Jack’s skill was the only thing to keep him alive.

 

“Jack.”

 

It does the trick. Jack’s eyes snap to his instantly, unerringly knowing where Mac is even though he’s been somewhere else for the past hour and a half.

 

“What’s wrong?” Jack asks, immediately on guard and scanning the room for danger. “You okay?”

 

 _“I’m_ fine, Jack.” Mac places his beer bottle down the small lamp table beside him, and then knocks his foot gently against Jack’s knee to get his attention. “Though, I think that should be my question.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Mac keeps his eyes on Jack as he nods his head towards his television as the last of the movie credits roll and his screen goes black.

 

“I’ve seen you concussed and barely conscious and still not miss a single second of this movie. Where’d you go?”

 

Jack rubs both hands roughly down his face with a loud groan, and then looks back at him. His face is still grim and Mac steels himself for whatever it is his partner is going to tell him, knowing full well he’s not going to like any of it.

 

“Alright, you’re the bomb nerd,” Jack starts, and despite the gravity of whatever it is Jack is going to tell him, Mac can’t help the small grin that curls the side of his mouth. He remembers the very first time that Jack said those words to him, way back in their first tumultuous days together in the Afghanistan. The words, once an insult thrown at him with a sneer of contempt, now serve as a testament to all they have overcome and survived together and to the bond they have forged as partners, confidants… _Brothers_. And Mac can’t think of another person in the world he would ever want to have by his side for any of it.

“In your expert EOD opinion,” Jack continues, “how long would it have taken our crazy Casper to set this whole thing up?”

“Well, let’s see—” he begins only to have Jack cut him off.

“Not everything,” Jack adds quickly. “I mean, the big ass twin could’ve been done, set-up, separately: am I right? That trash truck didn’t have to be right out in your driveway when he was here.”

“Yeah. I mean, no,” Mac clarifies. “The truck wouldn’t have to be here. CGN in and of itself is stable. That’s how Riley was able to drive that truck like a bat out of hell through the streets and hills of Los Angeles to get that second bomb here so quickly without it exploding. The sixteen barrels could have been packed ahead of time, as well as both logic boards built. They would have had to have been programmed and synced, side by side, but they also could have been done off-site, beforehand to save time, wherever it is he had his lab.”

“Alright, so specifically…how long, start to finish, would it have taken him to rig up your entire house like he did?”

Mac pulls himself up from his slouch, sliding his long legs off the coffee table and planting them on the floor, to sit up straighter on the couch. He looks around the room, his memory easily filling in the parts of his grandfather’s house that he can’t see as he pictures everything the Ghost would have to do and starts to do the calculations in his head.

There is no outward sign now of the dangerous drama that unfolded here over the past twenty-four plus hours. The sixteen barrels of explosives are gone, packed up on a specially equipped military transport aircraft with Charlie headed back for New York City. The FBI and SWAT teams have left, Matty having thanked them for their assistance shortly after he and Jack were finally able to leave his house, and then promptly dismissing them, explaining in no uncertain terms—as only Matty can—that this was a Phoenix matter and would be handled as such exclusively by them. The Phoenix technicians have already done their sweep, dusting every available surface of his house for forensic evidence, despite him explaining to Matty that it was useless, that they would find nothing—which they hadn't. The Ghost was too good, too meticulous to leave behind clues of any sort.

“Well,” Mac begins as he starts to visualize the events, how he would have done everything if it had been him setting this all up. “He would have had to spend a bit of time mapping out my house; calculate measurements, where all the windows and doors are, the crawl space underneath the house and find which room directly over it has the area big enough to lower all the barrels from and then moving the furniture out of the way and pulling up all the floorboards. 

"Then there’s actually getting each of the barrels into the house, lowering them down, and arranging them where he wanted them. Cutting all those holes in the walls in every room of the house, some rooms needing multiple entry points cut. Running all the wiring is going to cost you time. The two of us pulling them out was easy; we just had to grab an end and pull. But setting them up you need to feed each one down the interior of the wall—"

"And have to maneuver that wire around all the insulation, the nails, and the floor joists, then jump down into the crawlspace to hope it got fed all the way down to where you need it to be and then go back up and start all over again on the next one," Jack supplies.

“Exactly."

"And he had a dozen or so of them to do,” Jack adds.

“Yeah, at least,” Mac agrees. “Then you have to engage all the triggers at each and every one of the windows and doors and rig it back to the bomb's logic board, and then each wire has to be individually attached to the barrels and then run those back to the board as well.”

"But he can't just leave after everything is set up like he normally would," Jack says. "He has to put your house back together, make it look like nobody was ever here."

"Right. He has to go further, has to make it look like nothing was ever done. So he needs to rebuild the floor and put everything back in its place, patch all the holes in the drywall and paint over it all. Spackle takes anywhere from one to five hours to dry depending on humidity—it hasn’t been all that humid so we can probably go with between an hour and two for that—and paint between thirty minutes to an hour. So, we’ll round it up to give or take twelve, maybe thirteen hours total for him to do all this. But that’s just an approximation of the time spent setting things up. That number doesn’t figure in the variable of the Ghost casing my place, watching to pick out any sort of discernable pattern of my activities.”

“But...wait a minute," Mac stops as a thought suddenly occurs to him. "How did the Ghost know what color my walls where so he could bring the correct color to repaint? There are a hundred different colors they could have been, and each one of those has a half dozen or more color variants to them."

“What if he already knew that detail about your walls? What if we didn’t need to consider any of those variables?” Jack suggests. “What if he didn’t need to do any recon because he already knew _exactly_ when your house was going to be empty?”

“I’m not following you, Jack. How could he know all of that?” Mac questions, shaking his head in confusion. His mind is already taking apart all the angles of everything that has happened, everything he knows of his adversary so he can try to jump onto the same road as his partner's line of thinking. He leaves his questions about the paint alone for a moment, focusing instead on the rest of what Jack just said.

“How? I never repeat the same daily pattern when I’m home. That was the first thing you taught me when you brought me on board, and you've drilled that point into my head enough times that I'll never forget it. Missions come up randomly, and how long we’re gone is always irregular and unknown. There's too much unknown data for him to extrapolate even an estimate of when I'd be away from the house for that long of a period of time.”

“Why didn’t Murdoc kill Cage?” Jack asks him suddenly. “He's an assassin, it's what he does. More importantly, the psycho freak _enjoys_ it.”

Jack’s question is out of left field and it hits him like he’s been doused in a bucket of ice water, sudden and jarring, and his brain stutters to a halt. The image of a pale and unresponsive Cage being loaded into the back of an ambulance, the pool of blood, shocking crimson spread out against a backdrop of bright white, flashes in his mind and the same fury that gripped him two nights ago washes over him now.

“He almost succeeded, Jack. He shot her in the gut, _twice_. We both know the survival rate on those,” Mac snaps. “She was extremely lucky.”

He realizes suddenly that he’s shouting at Jack and he takes a deep breath, and then another as he works to calm himself down. He’s not angry at Jack—not in the least—but at that sonovabitch _Murdoc_ , who once again caught them unawares, once again ambushed and attacked them on their own home turf. He was deadly serious when he told Jack that he wanted Murdoc found, in cuffs and behind bars by the time Cage was cleared for duty, and somehow, if it is the last thing he did, Mac is going to make that happen. He isn’t going to let Murdoc hurt any more people that he cares about.

“You know,” Jack says, and Mac has known Jack long enough to hear the anger and unease beneath the easy drawl, see the tension in the fall of his shoulders. “My big geek of a partner keeps trying to get through my thick skull that, statistically speaking, there’s no such thing as _bad_ luck. Now considering how smart the kid is, and how he’s right most of the time—not all, mind you, just most of the time—it would stand to reason that the opposite of that statement is also true as well. Like all those philosophers are always going on about how you can’t have good without evil."

“ _Statistically speaking_ there’s no such thing as _good_ luck,” Mac reiterates for him, flipping the phrase over that he so often says to Jack when the older man gets on one of his rants about superstitions and his belief that they need to do things in a certain way, or in a certain order so that their mission doesn't go sideways on them.

Considering how often that actually happens to them, Mac is seriously considering conceding the point that his partner is correct in his superstitious assumptions. Secretly of course, because riling Jack up is just as much fun and relaxing for him as it is for Jack.

“What are you saying, Jack?”

"How long were we at that hospital, Mac?" Jack asks him slowly.

Forever Mac wants to say, every tick of the second hand feeling like sixty minutes instead of sixty seconds, darkness turning to dawn with still no word.

Mac runs his hands roughly down his face and leans over, elbows resting on his knees.

"Ah...probably around fourteen, fifteen hours I'd have to say."

Mac glances over at his partner when he doesn't say anything further. Jack is just staring back at him, waiting, expectant look reflected in his brown eyes.

"Jack..." It’s all he can get out, the rest of whatever it is he was going to say sticking in his throat. For once in his life, he doesn't want to put together the clues that are laying plain as day for him to see.

Killing Cage outright would have only kept them out of the house for a few hours before they all came back here to grieve and to determine their next steps, his house being the unofficial meeting place for the team.

Shooting to injure on the other hand, a wound grievous enough to require lengthy emergency surgery to try to save her life would keep the team at the hospital for the duration. Murdoc knows how close they all are, the family they've all become, and knows none of them would have left until they all knew that Cage was out of the woods.

Mac can feel the tension rising in his own body now, unease and foreboding creeping in along the edges as the implications of what Jack is suggesting start to coalesce.

"I spent all night while you were dismantling that bomb trying to make heads or tales out of all of the dangling details, and I kept coming back to the same tangled nightmarish answer,” Jack says carefully. “Murdoc has made it well known, quite vocally and to anyone who’ll listen to him, that he’s going to kill all of us. So why leave Cage alive? Why leave her still breathing, her cell phone working and basically within her reach? He knows where you live, Mac, knows that it’s not all that far from where she lives and if we didn't get there first, emergency responders would."

"He was buying time," Mac says slowly, shaking his head. "Murdoc and the Ghost...working together. That's—"

"Disconcerting, distressing, alarming, terrifying... Should I go on?"

"No. No, I think that's a pretty good start," Mac tells him dryly. "Well, we at least we have the two lunatics who are trying to kill all of us in the same place."

“Not _all_ of us,” Jack corrects, “just us. Not you. That’s something else I’ve been thinking about.”

“I think we’ve had enough of your thinking and theories of doom for one night, Jack,” Mac grouses, but there’s no heat behind his words. Jack may always say how he’s not the smart one in their partnership, but Mac knows better, knows just how wrong that his partner is about himself. Sure, math and physics may not be Jack’s strong suit, but when it comes to strategies and defense, reading people and situations his partner is one of the best and Mac knows that he’s definitely on to something now.

“Well if I hadn’t been partnered with the world’s slowest bomb nerd then I wouldn’t’ve had all that time last night to think,” Jack drawls with a wink. “But seriously, what you did today…or yesterday or whenever the heck it was…defusing both those bombs like you did, keeping us, your neighbors, and the surrounding ten blocks from blowing sky high? You really are a _wunderkind_ ,” Jack says to him, and Mac has to chuckle at the deliberate way that his partner mangles the accent. “I’ve been watchin’ you do your thing for a long time now, and every time I think I’ve seen you at your best, you up your game. You’re still the world’s biggest geek, but damn if you’re not an impressive one.”

“Thanks, Jack. And for the record, it was yesterday…well, actually, yesterday _and_ today, I suppose. At this point, it’s all blurred together. Would you like to know how long we’ve been awake for?”

“Too many damn, long-ass hours, that’s for sure. I suppose you’re going to tell me whether or not I say no anyway, so, lay it on me,” Jack grouses.

“You have to guess,” Mac tells him with a grin, making it into one of their games that Jack had started years before in Afghanistan; Jack’s deep drawl in his ear asking silly and inane questions helping to keep Mac grounded, let him remember that he wasn’t alone in that godforsaken desert, that somebody had his back.

“Seriously? You want me to crunch numbers now?” Jack asks with a shake of his head. “You know how tired I am, kid?"

Mac can't help the laughter that bubbles forth at Jack's comment, and he only laughs that much harder as Jack realizes what exactly he just said and kicks Mac lightly in the side of his leg with a grumbled, "Shut up, you know what I meant."

“Alright, hotshot,” Jack drawls, never one to pass up a challenge. He leans over and grabs his now warm beer off the coffee table, opens it and takes a long pull before putting it down, then leans back against the side of the couch and crosses his arms across his chest. “From the time you got _arrested_ ,” Jack stresses with a pointed look towards him, and god, Mac has forgotten all about that. It seems like so long ago that that happened, so long that they have all been running on caffeine and adrenaline. “It probably has to be close to fifty-five hours since we’ve gotten any shut eye.”

“Closer to sixty hours, but not too bad for an old man.”

“I’ll show you old, slick. I’ll kick your ass right here, right now.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright tough guy, whatever you say,” Mac placates before turning serious again. “So… We might as well lay all the bad out on the table at the same time, get it all out the way. You want to tell me the rest of this theory of yours? About how Murdoc only wants you guys dead and not me? Because I think I may have to disagree with you on that point, bud.”

Jack drops his arms as he stands up and starts a slow circuit around his living room. “Oh, yeah, he most definitely wants you dead, partner. Just not right away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Murdoc could have killed you a few times over now: the junkyard, when we were pinned upside down in that overturned transport truck, or when he kidnapped you. I mean your trail was cold, man. After the warehouse, I had nothing. Zilch. He could’ve killed you then, and I would’ve never known…would’ve never found you.” Jack stops his pacing and turns to him, and Mac can see the emotion that swims beneath the surface even now, that bone deep fear that Mac knows still lingers in his partner at the thought of what Murdoc was doing to him and being helpless to stop it.

“But I got away, Jack,” Mac says looking squarely at Jack, reminding him, reassuring him that’s he here and safe and very much alive. “You know, he said that to me when he had me," Mac adds quietly, "after I was taunting him…said that you’d never find me.”

He sees Jack swallow thickly before a grin tips his mouth. “You were taunting him? That’s my boy.”

"I think it’s from hanging around you too long," Mac shoots back. "You're a bad influence on me."

"Oh no, brother. I can take the blame for many of the less than savory influences that I have introduced to you over the years—and by less than savory, I mean _fun_ —but you are not blaming me for that, that's all on you. You had that mouthy mouth and attitude first day we met."

Mac tips his head in agreement because he can't argue that point, at all. It still makes him pause sometimes, to think of where they started,both of them counting down the days until they could be rid of each other, to being one of the most important people in each other's lives.

"So you think, what? That Murdoc is just playing with me?" Mac speculates. "That's not really his style."

“No, it’s not really his style,” Jack agrees. “But, then again, he’s never crossed paths with someone like you before. Usually he just goes in for the kill. Sure he may play around with them a bit before he finally offs ‘em, but it’s all one-sided, still an easy kill for him. You…? He has a particular morbid interest with you, pal. You challenge him, fascinate him in ways that no one probably ever has before. You make an adversary the likes of which he’s never been up against. He reminds me of one of those big ole’ barnyard cats we have back home, playin' with the mice he catches, chasin’ them, battin’ them around with his paws, seein’ how much they can take before he finally breaks ‘em.”

“Like taunting me with my dad… pinning you all down in the junkyard with a gun,” Mac says. “Shooting Cage, even the bombs. He’s playing, seeing what I can do, how much it’ll take for me to loose my cool, make a mistake... For him to finally break me.”

“And then like that cat, that’s when he goes in for the kill… After he’s done havin’ all his deranged fun. But sometimes those big ‘ole barn cats get too full of themselves, too cocky and don't realize just how smart and clever that mouse is and it's his undoing.”

“Are you comparing me to a mouse, Jack?”

“Cleverest one there ever was,” Jack drawls with a smile. “Have you ever watched those little critters? All scurrying around, laser focused on what they're doin’...able to snatch that cheese right off that trap without ever gettin’ their heads snapped off by that steel bar of death? Mmhmm… I'm tellin’ you--”

“Focus, Jack,” Mac chides, but there's no heat in his words at all, only amusement at the seemingly never ending entertaining tangents that his partner can go off on.  

“Oh, yeah, right, “Jack says as he clears his throat.

“But this whole thing with our buddy the Ghost, who we’ll get by the way,” Jack continues with a pointed look at him, “I made a promise to you back in New York and I’ll keep it. We’ll get that sonovabitch for what he did and Pena will get the justice he deserves.”

“I know you will, Jack. You’ve never broken a promise to me.”

“But him teaming up with the Ghost…” Jack adds, “I spent some time thinking about that as well. I don’t think it was a random thing. I think that Murdoc is forming his own Evil Justice League. Gathering together, for whatever nefarious plan the fruit loop has cooked up, the worst of the worst mankind has to offer.”

“Henry Fletcher,” Mac remembers.

“Bingo. Murdoc went to a whole hell of a lot of trouble for us to catch him. And as much as Bozer’s hypothesis about him wanting a teacher for when he thinks he gonna have Cassian back was a good one, the guys a Fader, man, with a trail of bodies a mile long. There’s only one reason you want a guy like that.”

“And it’s not a good one.” Mac puts in, running his hand roughly down his face. “So now Murdoc has a team of three.”

“That we know of. Something big is headin’ down the pike for us, amigo.”

“So what do we do next,” Mac asks. “What’s our next move?”

“Our first move, well after we get some sleep that is,” Jack says as he walks around Mac’s half-finished motorcycle that takes up most of the middle of the floor and drops back down on the couch facing him. “Listen, what I said about you sellin’ this place—”

“Jack—”

“Let me finish,” Jack interrupts him, holding up a hand. “I know, save for this house, that you don't have all that much that you can call yours that ties you to your family, and I was wrong to suggest you sell it. Not that you were gonna listen to me anyway.”

Jack fixes him with a sharp look and Mac simply shrugs, because, no, he has absolutely no intention of ever selling his grandfather's house.

“Mmhmm… Regardless, there might as well be a huge neon sign above this place that says, _attention bad guys and psychos, here I am, take me_.”

Mac outright laughs at that. “You're ridiculous, Jack.”

“I’m ridiculous, am I? Let's see now, you currently have not one, but two arch nemeses—”

“Arch nemesis, Jack? Really?”

“Which means, _we_ ,” Jack stresses the last word, continues on as if Mac hasn't said a thing as he waggles a stern finger between the two of them, “have two arch nemeses. And how many times have they broken into this very house to get to you?”

Mac opens his mouth but Jack doesn't give him a chance, just talk’s right over him, holding up his fingers to empathize his point as he answers his own question.

“That's right, three. So either good ‘ole Jack moves in here and shadows your skinny ass twenty-four seven three sixty-five, or you agree to install a security system in your grand pappy’s house.”

“Jack… what have we talked about you referring to yourself in the third person?”

“Mac… you're avoiding the question.”

“Fine, you're right, alright?” Mac relents, because he may be stubborn but he's also very smart. He realizes just how big—and how dangerous—the security risk is to not only himself, but the team, that this poses.

“I'm sorry, what was that?” Jack asks, the smug grin huge on his face. “I didn't quite catch that. You're gonna have to repeat that.”

“You're an ass.”

“Nope.  Nope, not what it was. Try again.”

“Fine. You're right.”

“And there it is."

“You happy now?” Mac asks, shaking his head at his partner's antics.

“My high blood pressure and my grey hairs thank you immensely, homey.”

“Yeah, well, don't go getting all full of yourself. A security system is the lesser of two evils… I love you, big guy, but I think if we have to spend anymore time together than we already do I'm going to take Bozer up on his continued insistence that I try my hand at building a teleportation station and you'll be my first subject.”

“Oooh… that'd be so cool, no more havin’ to take the jet, you could just zap us where we needed to be. Oh, oh, or even better… you can take all my molecules, and mix ‘em all up like what happened in The Fly, but only not with a fly but with Wolverine—”

“Jack—”

“Then I'd have claws, man. Just snap those bad boys out… I'd be unstoppable. Just imagine—”

“Or you'd be a big pile of goo on the chamber floor when it all went wrong.”

“Eww. That would suck.”

“Yeah. Besides, sorry to have to be the one to break it to you, man, but Wolverine really doesn't exist,” Mac tells his partner, then shakes his head in exasperation. “And we are off topic… Again.”

“You started it,” Jack accuses.

“Me? I didn't—”

Jack laughs as he punches Mac lightly in the shoulder, seamlessly picking back up their conversation.

“And it's not only you. I want a security system for all of us,” Jack says, waving his arm around to include the rest of the team as if they were sitting right here with them. “Matty, too. I'd like you and Riles to put your big brains together, work your magic and come up with a system where we're all linked together, doesn't matter if it's by our cell phones, or some gadget that you guys cook up. But the next time one of these lunatics tries to break in, or hell, even _thinks_ about breaking in to one of our places, I want us all to know about it, immediately. Think you can do that?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Can you do that?_ Stupid question, Jack, of course the kid can do it. Probably already has it all built in that freaky, ginormous brain of his.”

 “Yeah, I do,” Mac states standing quickly and making his way across the room to one of his workbenches, mind already working, analyzing and tossing away ideas. “Well, the beginnings of an idea, at least and half… maybe three-quarters built, but I need to talk to Riley first.

 “But not cell phones,” Mac states, poking his head around the corner wall to glance at Jack before raising his voice so his partner can still hear him as he continues rummaging through the wires and spare parts that litter the small table.

“Even with all the technology at our fingertips, cell phones are still unreliable; phone numbers can get cloned, conversations recorded, out of service range, to name just a few. Then I was thinking key fob, because we all have keys. But really that wouldn't work either, because most days you pick me up or we never bring them on missions, or the chain could break and it would fall off. So then…”

 “So then… What?”

 Mac looks up to find Jack leaning against the door jam watching him, eyebrow raised in an obvious invitation for him to continue his sentence.

“Oh, yeah, right. Well, I was thinking about my dad,” Mac tells him.

“Your dad?” Jack questions. “I don't get it. What does he have to do with all this?”

 “Because… ah ha,” Mac exclaims picking up a tiny gear he was looking for and holding it up for his partner to see. “He gave me the idea. We all wear watches, right? More importantly, we all wear pretty much the same one, or same maker, just different styles. And I can adapt the inner mechanics of my dads watch to make it work with what I want to do.”

“Which is wire all our wrist watches to the security systems.”

 "That's my plan.”

 “I love it when a plan comes together,” Jack drawls with an easy smile.

Mac chuckles. “You've been wanting to say that for a long time, haven't you?”

“Hannibal's one of the coolest, man.”

“We're going to get these guys, Jack,” Mac says, voice hard, no trace of the humor from just a few moments before. “Every last one of them. No more surprises. No more them being two steps ahead of us. We take this fight to them, and we're going to lock them all up in the deepest, darkest pit we can find.”

“Damn straight we are.”


End file.
